As Jack said, you have to buy now and then from Ebay to realize that it's mostly junk...
(for example: cut the cheap chinese breadboard jumper wires and see what's inside, or rather... what's NOT inside...)
I also bought 10 Maxim 7219 chips but out of frustration I finally purchased some real ones.
For my DCF77 radio clock project, I used 8 Maxim chips in a daisy chain for the Common Cathode Displays and 1 Maxim for the Common Anode one.
But I noticed that at random, some displays showed strange characters. Also some LED's lit up very dim when they should be off.
I'm curious to see what happens when I use genuine Maxims when they arrive...
front panel text needs to be corrected but it's still a work in progress.
